


Griffin Girl

by ArdeaWanders (ArdeaWrites)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Characters of color, Class Differences, Dragonriders of Pern meets Influencer Culture with a side of Brave New World for good measure, Gen, Intergenerational Friendships, Light Sci-Fi, No Romance, No Sex, Platonic friendships, adventure fantasy, adventures with alien wildlife, alien fantasy creatures, alien planets, biomechanical griffins, bonding with your shop class project, class sytem, colony ship, exploring the world as an act of rebellion, humans make pets out of anything, taking the future by the teeth and making it behave, teen girl protagonist, white author writing characters of color
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26182183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArdeaWrites/pseuds/ArdeaWanders
Summary: Ari wasn't a planned child; she wasn't born with a status tag determining her future and role in the strictly-controlled Redrock Colony. But she has a dream and a future and she's not going to let the colony's narrow-minded inward focus stop her from taking her place in the new world. She knows there's more to their planet than the red desert and scorching suns. To find out what's beyond the horizon, she'll become the pilot of a bio-mechanical griffin, brave the desert's fierce wind and unforgiving wildlife and fly to the world's edge herself.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey thanks for taking a chance on an Original Work! This should be a YA-length adventure fantasy by the time I'm done with it, following Ari's adventures of exploration and self-discovery through an alien planet. Themes are friendship, learning to understand and value things that are unfamiliar and foreign, and what must be sacrificed to build something greater. No romance, no sex, no big violent collateral-damage-inducing rebellions, just coming of age and deciding who you're gonna be. I'm a white author but a lot of these characters are not. I absolutely welcome feedback on how I'm describing them. This is set on an alien planet 200+ years after colonization; nothing is analogous to any Earth culture or political system.

  
  


Ari stretched her arms and rotated her shoulders until they popped. She arched her chest and watched the last fading stars between her dark fingers. 

Dawn on Redrock, dawn on the new world. 

Sunrise was abrupt and harsh, nothing like the old-world slow sunrise she’d seen in recordings and stills. New world dawn came with two suns, a lot of heat and the sudden clamor of the native day birds from their nests in the red desert stone around her. 

Ari spat the bitter night taste from her mouth and surveyed her tiny tower kingdom. She had her own solarshell tent enclosing her bed and belongings. And she had two square yards of genuine red-dirt new world real-estate, walled in by a low polysteel parapet, overlooking Khalisona’s verdant gardens. It was all hers, per her contract, as long as she stayed in Khali’s employ. 

Beyond that, she had the horizon. Deep, dusk-blue sky rolled over the fire-colored mesa stone, the dusty plane divided by black chasms hundreds of meters deep. Her eyes gripped the horizon line, where the red of the mesa met the dawn sky. _The earth is mine. The sky is mine. The air is mine._ Her private mantra filled her chest and she raised her hands to the rising suns, fingers spread. _The world is mine._

Few lead-class citizens had her view. Most never saw outside the colony ship, Redrock, an ironic name for a world encased in polymer and chrome. She squinted up at the ship, at the curve of silver and reflected red arching high behind her. She didn’t like looking at it. She’d worked very hard to get out and into the free air of the colony estates, but its shining walls cut half her views of the desert. Its presence was inescapable. 

“Ari!” The shrill screech echoed up the stone spire. 

Ari leaned over the parapet and yelled “What!” Below her tower, the rock spire widened into terraced gardens lush with green old-world vines. Pools of water glittered between spreading leaves and brilliant squash flowers. Khali had an absurd water ration and she’d used to turn her patch of desert into a verdant oasis tended by six full-time gardeners. 

“ARI!” 

Birds scattered from their stony nests. 

“What!” Ari yelled again. 

“Get down here, you lazy-ass twit!” 

That was Henria, Khali’s little protégé. “Keep your shirt on, Hen-hen,” Ari yelled back. “I’ll be down in a sec.” She descended the steel ladder, incongruous against wind-shaped stone, to the terraces. She eyed Henria, took in all five-and-a-half feet of seething gold-class girl, and put her chin up. “Alright, what do you want?” she asked. 

Henria took a breath and Ari clapped her hands over her ears in mock preparation for the sound. “I am out of SOAP!” She brawled. “You had one job. ONE JOB!” She punctuated her sentenced with an outstretched finger. “What’d you spend the money on, hun? Got some secret stash? Do I need to come up there and look for it?” She nodded to the ladder. 

Ari put her hands on her hips and fixed Henria with a glare solid as the stone she stood on. “You know I bought that soap like you asked because you unwrapped it last night. I can smell it on you, you little fool. Go get it back from Chaliar. You know he’s the one who took it and you’re just too scared of him to ask.” She leaned forward, glad she’d gotten a whole two inches on the girl and could now loom over her, even if just a tiny bit, and said “Don’t you go accusing me of stealing. You do that again and I’ll shave your head while you sleep.” 

Henria’s hands flew to her head, as if she had to protect her prized yellow strands right then and there. “You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed. 

Ari smiled. 

“Lead-weight dead-weight,” Henria said in a sing-song voice, half under her breath. 

Ari ignored the slur. _As if that’s new,_ she thought. She’d been hearing that one since she was three years old, toddling around after the kinder guide in-ship, and wondering why she wasn’t getting a fancy tablet like the rest of the kids. _“Lead-class,”_ the teacher had said, though the word wasn’t on their big wall chart of all the ship peoples and their social strata. 

Funny how fast small children picked up on verbal rhymes and social divides. 

Ari turned away from Henria. Golds were special, delicate, emotional. Designed to be useful and loved, uniquely gifted to be the perfect model citizen of the new world. They were the creative counterpoint to the platinum-citizen drive for artistry and perfection. 

Henria must have missed a DNA sequence somewhere in the programming, Ari thought. Henria was useless. 

“Girls! Breakfast!” Vixet called from the courtyard below. Vixet was tall, willowy and utterly bland. Her face was roundly forgettable, unlike Henria’s old-world Euro beauty and Khali’s boldly sculpted features. But Ari knew the mind that plain face hid so well; there was nothing simple about silver-class citizens. 

Vixet handed them each a morning ration bar and smiled a smile calculated in its passivity. “Good morning to you both. Henria, Chaliar borrowed your soap. Please don’t accuse Ari of theft, you know she doesn’t like it. Ari, would you be a good girl and forgive Henria? Her skin is delicate and needs special care.” 

Ari swallowed a string of descriptive terminology she’d have loved to apply to Henria’s skin and settled for a jaw-clenched not of acceptance. 

Henria rolled her eyes, took a big bite of her breakfast bar and stalked away into the gardens to enjoy the early morning sunlight while she could. 

The ship did that, Ari thought. The ship had designed Henria’s skin to be thin, white and delicate, unable to stand the dry winds and harsh sunlight of the new world. She’d never survive outside without the special soaps and creams the ship supplied. But why she had to be so insufferably petty about everything, Ari couldn’t guess. 

Vixet placed her hands on Ari’s shoulders and looked at her gently, as if pitying a small child. “You must understand, she’s so afraid of losing her skin to this harsh place. She’ll be back inside the ship soon and it will be easier for her there.” Vixet’s own skin, tan and smooth, would redden in the afternoon. Ari’s skin, a dark warm brown, took the new world heat well but all of them, even Khali with her velvety black skin, needed to go indoors or under shade at mid-day when the suns beat down scorching hot. 

“I know,” Ari said. She shrugged Vixet’s hands off her shoulders and finished her breakfast bar. “Her skin’s all she’s got.” 

Vixet opened her mouth and closed it again. By now Vixet was used to Ari’s barbs, but the dissent between Ari and Henria still distressed her. She was a silver, Ari knew she couldn’t help it. She’d been designed to make things right, smooth things over, find social peace. Suddenly Ari felt bad for her. _At least I’m not serving some artificial genetic programming,_ she thought. 

Ari looked up at the curve of the ship, arching above them in unearthly proportion. Somewhere on its flank her own reflection looked back, a tiny mote on a distorted vista. 

_Is that how you see me?_ She asked the silent ship. Inside that metal skin was populated by thousands of model citizens, each with their own class, their own worth, going about the tasks and lives they were designed to live. No space for lead-class, no space for the lives it didn’t want. 

Ari owed Khali loyalty, because Khali had taken her in and given her a home on the out-ship estate when no one else would touch her work contract, but that loyalty didn’t extend to sour little upstarts like Henria or Chaliar, the copper-class boy responsible for the garden’s water rationing and stealing soap. 

“Ari, do you have today’s flight log updated?” 

She blinked away the after-image of the ship’s bright reflection and focused on Vixet. “Yes. We’re getting seed delivery at ten and the vase is coming in at noon.” 

“The vase should be later. We have the best light at three.” 

“There’s a windstorm predicted for this afternoon.” Vixet could check the weather reports from her personal tablet, but that wasn’t her _job._

“Well, alright, but please ask the pilot to consider the light and make sure they arrive from the south, so the shadow doesn’t cross over the cameras.” 

Ari made a mental note to contact the courier pilot and tell him to watch the angle of the suns. Khali’s gardens were her pride and joy, but the ship owned the video feeds Vixet’s team sent back. For most of the ship citizens, the estate broadcasts were all they’d see of the outside world. 

“Today is a big day,” Vixet reminded her. “The vase is an amazing piece of technology. It’ll be the new centerpiece of the gardens. With a good broadcast, Khali’s resource allocation will be increased accordingly. You understand this, right?” 

Ari nodded and bit her tongue, letting herself slip into the mask of simplicity that Vixet believed of her. Vixet had been lecturing her about the vase for two weeks. She’d worked with Vixet for four years, she could survive another six. Maybe. 

Vixet suddenly withdrew three paces and squared her shoulders. Ari didn’t need to look to know Lady Khalisona was walking up behind her. She didn’t turn around; privileges of being lead-born, lead-class, simultaneously beneath and above social expectations. Instead, she leaned into the hug Khali encircled her with and enjoyed the flash of pinched irritation on Vixet’s face. 

“Good morning,” Khali said, meaning everyone in general but, Ari thought as Khali’s arm tightened briefly around her shoulders, she meant Ari more than most. 

She released Ari and took the tablet with its updated schedule from Vixet. “We’re changing the arrival broadcast. Ari, I want you with us on this one. You’ll draw the first water from the vase and drink it.” 

Ari glanced between Khali and Vixet. “Are you sure? I thought that was for silver-class and above.” The vase would condense, chill and purify water from any source, supposedly, and luxuries like that were reserved for higher-class citizens. Ari was used to drinking tepid water from the garden tanks, still tasting of ship polymer. 

Khali’s black eyes caught hers and held. “That’s why I’d like you to do it, if you’re alright with it. Citizens need to see more than just their pretty trinkets. The vase is the finest platinum-class handiwork but it serves all of Redrock, and I want them reminded of it.” 

Ari nodded. She'd play the part, be the face of the lead-class, the unwanted. _But Khali knows me, and that’s what matters._ She’d do it. She’d be on the broadcast, balancing who she was with who Vixet would permit to her to be, and she’d drink the purest water on the planet. If the vase lived up to its billing, at least. 

She climbed her tower and updated the flight log. The Redrock colony ship had crash-landed into its desert berth two hundred years ago, losing most of its higher hard technology laboratories and stores of rare earth metals from the old world. The old world had communications satellites and towers linking people across continents, but Redrock was limited by line-of-sight broadcast networks and solar-charged chemical batteries. Ari glared at the ship as she aligned the signal tower’s antenna and waited for the ship’s communications techs to respond. That crash had leashed the colonists to their ship, made them reliant on the class-system so overpopulation and social upset wouldn’t stress the resource balance. All the wet labs had survived, of course; and the polymer replication machinery and the hydroponics gardens. Redrock could design all the humans it wanted, but it couldn’t give them the tools to truly thrive in their new world. 

Khalisona’s estate was one of twelve, established ten years prior in the ship’s first attempt to grow their resource base beyond their own walls. The people inside Redrock voted year by year if they wanted to continue allocating resources to the estate experiments. As long as Vixet made her broadcasts and the ship stayed entertained by the glimpse of estate life, they’d keep paying with water and infrastructure and Khali, and Ari, could continue living in relative freedom. 

Ari got her ping back from the ship and sent the courier request. From there it would be sent via in-ship network to the eyries, and, hopefully, to the pilots’ tablets which, again hopefully, they would check before they began their runs. She chewed her chapped lip and tasted the faintest tang of blood. 

Her one job, on contract for Khali, was courier communication. She scheduled all the incoming courier deliveries, resource allocation and goods payments. Water, heavy freight and visitors came by a slow cable array, a sixteen-hour hopscotch across the fractured mesa despite the estate being scarcely half a mile from the ship. Anything one wanted delivered quickly, reliably, and not battered to death or held up by high winds, one had delivered by courier. A few minutes’ flight, in good weather, and the package would be in your hands. 

The tower’s tablet pinged with a local message. Henria was requesting a package of spices. Khali’s great gifting was in gardens and growing things, but Henria’s was in preparing decadent foods, turning the fruits of the garden into stuff fit for the silver, gold and platinum-level tables inside Redrock. 

Ari denied Henria’s request. The schedule was already filling up in the hours before the windstorm and her request was conflicting with the vase delivery. 

It pinged again. Henria was being insistent. 

“No!” Ari yelled over the tower’s edge. “The arrival window is too short with the other deliveries and we don’t have enough flyer batteries charged up yet.” 

“Then order it for later!” Henria replied. 

“There’s a windstorm coming in this afternoon,” Ari said. 

“Last time you just said that so you could say no,” Henria retorted. 

Ari sighed. Henria was right; she had denied a petty request for frilly underwear ‘because there was a windstorm,’ and Henria had caught on fast when the day turned out to be dead calm. But windstorms were an easier explanation than ‘the only courier available was the jerk pilot who talked down to me last week and called Khali a dirty word and I won’t do business with him anymore.’ 

“There really is a windstorm this time, but I’ll see if I can schedule for when it calms down later. Can’t promise anything.” 

That seemed to quiet Henria. Then the tower pinged again, this time with an incoming unscheduled delivery message. _¬-Dragonfruit, gift from estate of Renchescia, 11:30 AM._

Ari swore and submitted a rescheduling request for 9 AM. The ship ate the message and spat back a fast denial. The courier was already out on their route, schedule could not be changed. 

Then the confirmation came through for vase delivery at noon, southern approach, and then spice delivery was confirmed not for 6 PM like she requested, but for noon as well, with a note from the pilot that they were hoping to get in and back to the ship before the windstorm. 

She frantically denied the spice delivery, got an answering ping, and then an apology from the pilot, but he’d still drop by on his route if he could get in before the storm. She denied it again and he accepted the denial, then replied that he’d be running early anyway on a short route and it wasn’t any trouble at all, he’d just stop by real quick and drop it off before the storm. And then cut the connection. 

Ari loved watching the lithe flyers, built like giant insects from ship polymer and new world organics, but sometimes she wanted to throttle their pilots. 

She slid down the ladder and scanned the garden for Khali and Vixet, but they were in the middle of the morning’s live broadcast. Henria was acting out a complicated preparation of garden-grown zucchini while Khali explained the growing conditions and nutritional benefits. 

Ari chewed dead skin off her lip and checked the time. An hour before the first delivery. Couriers landed on the upper terrace, just below her tower. The terrace was backed by the carved steps and grand door of Khali’s underground estate house and framed by flowering vines flowing down the tower. Its edges opened out into space, dropping hundreds of feet off the mesa cliffs into the chasms and cervices below. The terrace was designed to be a picture-perfect contrast to the sculpted polymer and shimmering metal flyers, with their sleek insectoid figures juxtaposed on sky, greenery and wind-hewn stone, but the designers had sacrificed space for aesthetics and they didn’t have room for more than one flyer to land. 

She checked the batteries in the solar charger. Flyers exchanged batteries at each estate, to ensure optimal flight power; they had four flyers coming in but only two full-charged batteries and a third one half-way. If Henria’s courier came before the windstorm he’d be trapped all afternoon until the batteries finished charging and the wind died down. She bit her lip again, harder. She needed one of Henria’s fancy lip waxes. 

At least they had enough water. Flyers ran on batteries and nutrient packs but their human pilots always needed water. 

The vase was supposed to help with that by condensing and purifying water from the air. Its output would be a pittance to what the gardens required but it was a start. A proof that the technology was viable, and that life independent of the ship’s massive water-storage and purification systems was possible. 

And she swore, and slammed her palms down on the battery box. Renchescia was Khali’s rival platinum, running an estate on the far side of the ship. Renchescia had scheduled a “gift” delivery for the same window as the vase. If Ren could upset the widely-anticipated broadcast, it’d reflect poorly on Khali and the next time the ship wanted to test expensive new technology, maybe they’d pick Ren’s estate instead. 

If Khali lost her water ration, she’d lose the garden bit by bit to the scorching desert heat. And if she lost the garden, she’d lose the broadcasts and the income they generated for her staff. And that meant she’d lose Ari. If faced with sending someone back to the ship, the lead-class would always be the first to go. 

_Lead-weight dead-weight._ She tasted blood in her mouth. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The broadcast wrapped up just before ten. Ari had the terrace as ready as she could get it, water and battery set out, as Vixet’s four camera operators set up around the space. “Keep the deck clear,” she told them. “It’ll be a fast turn-around.” They were steel-class men, efficient and businesslike, and rotated out every three days. Ari never saw enough of them to learn individual names before they swapped with a new crew, but they tended, in general, to listen to good sense even if it came from a lead-class. 

She retreated to her tower, got confirmation of seed delivery’s imminent arrival, slid back down and trotted to the terrace just as the sleek white flyer swept up from the mesa’s shadow. A plenty dramatic entrance, if the pilot could stick the landing. She stayed clear of the dust cloud as the flyer touched down feather-light. The pilot, clearly aware of the cameras, swept off her contoured helmet and shook out a mane of red ringlets. She smiled prettily and handed off her seed package to Ari, in exchange for water and battery. The pilot took a slow drink of water, head thrown back to display a long pale freckled neck for Vixet’s cameramen, then took her sweet time changing the battery. 

Ari gritted her teeth. The woman might be relishing every moment as the center of attention on Khali’s broadcast, but Ari had a schedule to keep. Unfortunately for her, even courier pilots outranked lead-class citizens and she couldn’t say anything to hurry things along without risking Vixet’s cold, barbed ire. She caught Chaliar staring at the pilot’s flight-suit-clad rear and shooed him off with the seed package. At least he was still young enough to take orders from her by habit. 

The battery finally changed, the pilot gave a two-line speech about which in-ship hydroponics lab the seeds had come from and what species they were--a job that should have been Ari’s, but Vixet didn’t like letting her talk to the cameras--and got herself and her flyer off the tower. 

Ari swept the terrace and jammed the battery in its charger. She took a breath to call for Khali in the calm between broadcasts but Henria was suddenly in front of her. “Who is the vase pilot?” she demanded. 

“I don’t have a clue,” Ari lied. 

“Is it Jacor?” 

“No, he only delivers to female clients.” 

“He what- Hey! That was entirely your fault!” 

Ari grinned. Henria had mistyped her own name on an order for scented feminine products and a very handsome, slightly confused pilot had come looking for a young man named ‘Henry.’ “That was in no way my fault, I’m not here to correct your spelling. It’s Jacor. But he’s bringing a piece of ship tech, not your bathroom towelettes, so don’t make a scene.” 

“You can’t tell me what to do.” 

“Fine. Get out of the way if you don’t want the dragonfruit on your head.” The tower was chirping with an incoming flyer alert. 

Vixet waved her hands. “No! It’s too early, the light is all wrong!” 

“It’s not the vase,” Ari replied. “It’s Renchescia. They sent a surprise delivery.” 

“You should have refused it!” 

“I did refuse it!” Ari retorted. She gave up trying to make batteries charge faster and climbed the tower to confirm the terrace was clear. The pilot was coming in a lazy arc wide around the tower. A big flyer, an older cargo model carrying an oversized crate. 

Ari swore and slid down her ladder. “Get back!” She yelled. 

The camera crew gave up on filming and jumped into the gardens as the enormous cargo flyer lumbered in and set down in a cloud of dust. They should have set up to broadcast the delivery but the dust was too thick. Khali would hear about that from Ren later, Ari was sure, but for now she didn’t care. 

Chaliar had been happy to hang around when the package was small and the pilot pretty, but he always vanished when the freight loads came in. Ari hefted the crate of fruit off the flyer’s back and set it down to one side, hopefully far enough out of the way. “Batteries? Water?” she asked the pilot, an older man with skin dark as Khali and a beard shot with grey. Probably a first-generation pilot, one of the earliest out of the eyries. 

“Yes, thanks, two batteries please.” 

“Two?” 

“Yeah, that crate is heavy and this old girl takes a little more power than the modern types.” He patted the flyer’s neck affectionately. The insectoid head turned and Ari could have sworn its operating lights winked. She would have given her eyeteeth to sit and chat with the pilot but the vase would be coming in a matter of minutes. 

“I- I can give you a battery and a half,” she offered. “We’re low and you were not on today’s schedule.” 

He sighed. “I suppose that’ll have to do. I was surprised when Ren contracted with me. Let me guess, this is some… plat thing?” he waved. 

Ari glanced frantically around but the camera men were still untangling themselves from the squash vines. She nodded, hesitant to confirm aloud. Rivalries between platinum citizens weren’t rare, but it was considered a weakness to acknowledge them in front of strangers and if she got caught badmouthing Renchescia on camera she’d be banished to scrub water tanks for a week. 

“Don’t worry about me, kid. I’m just an obsolete copper-class, I don’t know anything.” He grinned at her as he swapped out the batteries. The ones he handed her were old, corrosion building up at the contact points. She’d have to clean them before she could charge them. 

This was a problem. She smiled and thanked the pilot anyway, because it wasn’t his fault he’d gotten in the middle of Ren and Khali’s rivalry. 

Khali came up the steps, brushing dust delicately from her flowing dress. She greeted the pilot and saw him off, waving as the big old flyer lumbered into the air, inspected the dragonfruit and handed one to Henria to prepare with all the decorum as if she’d been on live broadcast. Ari loved watching her move, watching her work, every motion so controlled and intentional, it was almost a dance. But her hands itched with anticipation. The tower was pinging again, incoming flyer, either the vase, finally, or Henria’s rogue spice request, and the wind was picking up. 

“Khali, I’m sorry, we may have a problem,” she said, face burning as she interrupted the tableau over the dragonfruit. 

Khali looked up at her, eyes intent. “Oh?” 

“We’re out of batteries.” 

“Oh.” Khali set down the slice of fruit she’d been inspecting. “I see.” She turned over the crate lid and traced the seal of the other estate. “I see indeed. Ari, go to the tower. If that isn’t the vase, refuse it by whatever means necessary. Vixet! Gather your crew. We’ll invite the pilot to stay with us to see the vase installed. Full interview, picture of life in the eyrie. Henria, this is your favorite pilot, right? Good. You’ll do the interview. Find out all about cuisine of the eyries.” Khali couldn’t possibly have missed Henria’s flaming red blush but she didn’t acknowledge it. 

Vixet jumped into action, arranging her camera crew to capture the incoming flyer. Ari acknowledged the pilot’s landing request and breathed a sigh of relief seeing Jacor’s name. It was the vase. 

She waved confirmation to Vixet, who positioned Khali and Henria artistically on the terrace. The dragonfruit crate was lidded and forgotten in the corner, where the noon heat would probably spoil the contents. A breeze kicked up around the tower, plastering Khali’s flowing gown to her legs and whipping Henria’s blond strands over her face. 

Jacor was bare-headed and wearing a solemn proud expression tailored especially, Ari thought, for his moment before the cameras. He brought his flyer around in a graceful loop to approach from the south, catching the direct sunlight and then the reflected dancing light from the ship skin. The vase was suspended below his flyer, a glittering tower of rainbow silica glass, transparent polymer and old world true silver metal. It was stunningly beautiful and almost as tall as Henria, Ari guessed, and probably worth more than the estate made in three years’ produce sales. 

_Probably worth more than my work contract,_ she thought. 

Wind whistled up the tower’s edge, making her solarshell vibrate like a plucked string. If Jacor knew his business he’d get the vase down fast, before an errant gust slammed it against the terrace. 

He was close. Khali had her hand up on the vase’s edge, symbolically guiding it into its place amidst the greenery. 

And then the tower pinged. Spice pilot. Ari swore and tore at her lip until blood welled between her teeth. This was unacceptable and she told him so, refusing the landing request again and again but he kept coming. Then the flyer came into view, and she understood why. 

His flyer was too small for the wind and it was being thrashed. Khali’s estate faced away from the prevailing winds so they hadn’t noticed how fast the storm had developed, but now scorching hot gusts were whistling through the mesa cervices. 

If the pilot didn’t land soon, he’d be crushed against the mesa or swept into a crevice and killed. 

But if she interrupted the broadcast, she’d be in huge trouble. Khali would forgive her but Vixet would not, and last time she’d interrupted a live broadcast she’d lost her lux cash ration for a month and spent most of that time scrubbing algae out of the water tanks. 

The pilot wrenched his flyer, fighting the wind for altitude and to draw close to the tower. He couldn’t see Jacor and the vase from his side. Ari waved her arms to warn him, pointing down and yelling loud as she could, but the wind whipped her words away. 

Then a gust came around the tower and caught the vase. Khali stepped back and braced herself to keep it steady as it set down, and Jacor cut the cables as his flyer was pushed off center. Ari yelled a warning but was too late- 

-the spice pilot careened around the tower and skidded onto the terrace sideways, flyer leaving a trail of torn polymer wings. Jacor tried to get altitude but was already too low, eye-level with Ari in the tower. She caught his gaze and realized in that fraction of a second what he intended to do. 

She jumped for the terrace, slammed shoulder-first into stone and rolled through the dust as Jacor’s flyer crashed into the tower, its claws shredding the communications array and her solarshell. She came to a stop on the terrace edge, fingers clinging. Below her the dark chasm yawned. Wind tore at her clothing and hair. Above her metal screamed and bent, and she glimpsed the antenna shear loose and fall straight for her. She couldn’t let go, she was too close to the edge- she couldn’t move, not fast enough- then strong black hands closed around her wrists and dragged her back from the edge and into the safety of the garden. The antenna crashed down behind her and rolled into the crevice. 

She clung to Khali, her arms shaking as the wind continued its onslaught. Somewhere beyond Khali, something shattered into a million tinkling fragments across the garden flagstones. 

The vase hadn’t been secured and now it lay in a twisted ruin of silver meshwork and glittering shards. Khali’s arms tightened around her shoulders. “You’re safe,” she said, her mouth almost against Ari’s ear to be heard over the wind. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.” 

Ari drew back from her and looked up. The spice pilot was cradling his flyer’s head, bowed over it as if in mourning, while Jacor’s flyer clung to the tower and folded its wings to avoid being torn off into the wind. Jacor slid off his flyer’s back and landed on the terrace. He hauled the other pilot up but stopped when the flyer head came too- the spice pilot’s flyer was dead. 

Henria screamed. Vixet, somehow, had wrangled her camera crew to continue filming, and for that Ari hated her. Now they were catching Henria’s horror at the dead flyer, at the ichor oozing from its cables, set against its pilot’s obvious grief and even Jacor’s sudden empathy. Jacor had dropped to his knees beside the other pilot, his anger gone, and was holding his shoulders. 

Ari couldn’t hear them. The wind was too loud now, tearing at the garden, the leaves, the shade structures, but the clear blue sky above them and the twin suns beat down just as hard. 

“What do I do?” she asked Khali. 

Khali gripped her hand. “You be strong, Ari. You be strong and you keep going, because this isn’t the end.” She hugged Ari again and planted a fast kiss to her temple, and then drew back two steps. 

The cameras were on them. Ari drew herself up, because none of this was her fault, _none_ of it, but a priceless piece of ship technology lay in ruins, a flyer was wrecked on the terrace and her tower was destroyed. 

And she had one job. Communicate with the courier pilots. Schedule deliveries. Handle the water and the batteries. 

How had it all gone so wrong? _Because no one listens to a lead-born._

She met Vixet’s icy glare and set jaw with a narrow-eyed look of her own. She wanted, she so _wanted_ to march up out of the garden and give that spice pilot a piece of her mind. He should have known better than to fly in this wind, should have obeyed her when she told him to deliver after the storm, should have- but the words died in her throat. 

She was lead-class, she couldn’t just berate a citizen that way, no matter what they’d done. And his flyer was dead, destroyed. He’d paid enough. 

But she could go to work. She climbed the stone steps to the landing terrace, squinting against the wind. It was past noon, and Henria needed to be inside, and there was only one person she could yell at to get things done. “Chaliar!” She shouted, spotting him watching from the estate doorway. “Take Henria in! Now!” He did as directed, though his glare said this was the last time he’d accept her orders, and dragged Henria away. She gripped Jacor’s arm to get his attention. “Is your flyer safe there?” she asked. 

“No, we need to get it down,” he said. “But…” he looked at the broken flyer and the spice pilot. 

Ari glanced back at the cameras and considered just hollering for the camera men to come help them move the flyer. 

But they wouldn’t, not without Vixet’s direct order, and Vixet wouldn’t do that for her. She’d have to finish the scene. Keep playing through to the end, and then find out if she’d been cast as a hero or a villain. “Here, help me with this,” Ari said, and moved to lift one end of the ruined machine. Jacor lifted the other end and between the two of them they got the biggest pieces of flyer shifted to the side. Jacor got his flyer down from the tower, its claws trailing shreds of solarshell. 

Ari felt a deep pang of her own grief; her sanctuary was gone, along with the estate’s communications array. Vixet’s broadcast was safe, of course, because she rated her own micro-array worth its weight in solid gold, set up at the bottom of the garden and relaying through three automated repeaters straight to the ship’s censor hub. 

But for Ari, her home was gone. 

And it might be gone for ever, she realized, as a cold hand of dread closed around her chest. If Vixet and the ship decided she was somehow responsible for the vase and flyer destruction, she’d be scrubbing pipes and tanks deep in the ruined ship basements for the rest of her life to work off the technology debt. 

Khali’s words came back to her. _This isn’t the end._

Not when she told Jacor there were no batteries and his face became a mask of controlled anger, not when she peeled the spice pilot away from his dead machine and got both of them indoors into Khali’s carved-stone guest foyer, and not when she finally got away from the cameras to check on Henria and found her crying and a little sunburnt but otherwise whole, locked in her private washroom. 

And not when Chaliar hissed at her, from the doorway to his own room, “They’re gonna kick you deep-ship for this, lead-weight. You’ll go down down down and you’ll never be coming back.” 

Two cameras stayed outside and filmed Khali’s heartfelt reaction to the vase’s destruction, a necessary piece of penitence to the ship’s artisans, while the other two traded between Ari and the pilots. She got them water, got the spice pilot to take his helmet off, was shocked to see how young he looked. He blinked back at her and Jacor with red-rimmed eyes in a small olive face. “She’s gone. What…” he looked at Jacor. “What do I do?” 

Jacor shook his head. “Are you still a fledgling?” 

The kid nodded. “Eyrie West. This was my fourth job.” 

“Where’s your wingmate?” 

“I don’t have one. West doesn’t do wingmates.” 

Jacor swore. “I forgot about that. Listen, kid. Windstorms happen. Mourn your flyer, take the polymer back tomorrow to the recycle station, and sign up for deep ship cleaning duty until you can retest for aptitude. That’s what you do.” He turned to Ari. “She’ll be headed the same way I think, you two can go together. They’ll put your tech debt on her. Don’t worry, kid. You’ll be back in the eyrie, or at least up-ship, by this time next year.” 

Ari slammed her palms down on the table. Cameras or no cameras, suddenly she didn’t care. “That was not my fault,” she snarled. “You were showing off when you knew that windstorm was coming. You should have gotten that vase down and secured as fast as you could. And you,” she turned to the spice pilot, “I told you twice we had a schedule conflict and not to arrive at noon, and you ignored me. And then I denied your landing request three times, and you still ignored me. Your flyer is dead because of you, not me. The vase is destroyed because of _you,_ Jacor, not me, and I will not be blamed for any of this.” 

Jacor calmly drank his water. “I didn’t say it was your fault, but you’re lead-class.” He shrugged. “He’s steel and I’m copper, and even in the eyries we’re of more use than some random lead.” Jacor clamped his hand down on the younger pilot’s shoulder. The boy’s eyes darted between Ari and Jacor and the cameras watching them. “What are you going to do, cry about it? Just think, with you working off his debt he can go back to being a productive citizen. That’s something you’ll never be.” 

What was she going to do? Ari wiped her mouth to cover her fury and saw a smear of blood on the back of her hand. 

She was not going to forfeit her work contract without a fight. Not let arrogant flyer pilots dump their mistakes on her shoulders. Not submit to Redrock rule and sign up for deep-ship cleaning work, spend decades in the dark, shut away from the wind and sky. Not let her metal status stop her. 

_The earth is mine. The sky is mine. The air is mine._ The ship, Jacor’s arrogance, Vixet and her broadcasts, they would lock her back inside cold metal walls and steal the world from her, and not even Khali could save her from tech debt. 

She’d sooner throw herself off the mesa. The desert wind would have more mercy. 

She set her teeth and glared at the two of them, at the camera men, at Henria, sniffling through her cracked door, at Chaliar lurking around the corner, a smirk on his face. If she was going to throw herself into empty air, might as well find wings. “I’ll become a pilot,” she said. “I’m going to fly.” 


	3. Chapter 3

  


Ari sat on the tower, legs drawn up and arms around her knees. The suns were slivers on the horizon and the air was growing chill, though the windstorm had passed hours before. She had climbed the tower to see if there was anything to salvage. 

There was nothing left. 

What the flyer’s claws had started the wind had finished, and the solarshell was nothing but ribbons of silver cloth. Her bed, her clothing, everything else- gone in the storm, blown off the tower and into the chasms. Even her tiny stash of lux cash, currency for ship-made nonessentials, was gone. 

Her contract pay was tracked digitally. That much she still had, locked away on in-ship computers, though not for long. Her four years’ pay wouldn’t cover a tenth of the tech debt. 

She wiped her eyes and held her knees tighter. 

Her words to the pilots had been bold, but now she wondered where that fire had gone. They’d cleaned up the broken flyer, bundled all the scrap polymer they could find for recycling, finally gotten a battery charged for Jacor’s flyer. The vase glass was swept up out of the garden. The terraces had returned to a semblance of normal, but Ari could have cut the evening’s tension with a knife. 

Vixet hadn’t looked at her. Hadn’t acknowledged her presence. The cameras had been carefully turned away from her throughout the evening’s cleanup. Now the cameramen were either off-duty or inside filming Henria’s dinner preparations. None of them cared she’d just lost everything. A careful little shunning, least anyone in-ship be moved to pity for the poor useless lead-born. 

“Can I come up?” 

Khali stood at the bottom of the ladder. She was out of her dress and in loose pants and a tunic, bright comfortable warm fabric against the desert’s night chill. 

Ari nodded. She sniffed and wiped her eyes again, and leaned into Khali when she put an arm around her shoulders. Ari had dreamed of saving enough lux cash to buy cloths as fine as those, instead of the scratchy ship-issue grey jumpsuits she was allotted. And now even those were on her tech debt, everything but the one she was wearing. 

They watched the suns set red and gold over the mesa. Would this be the last time, Ari wondered- and stopped herself as her throat caught. 

“This isn’t the end,” Khali said. Her fingers tightened on Ari’s shoulder. “I promise this isn’t the end.” 

“Did Vixet say if they put the flyer and the vase on me?” she asked. Enough wondering, she wanted to know her future. 

“I’m fighting it.” 

That meant they had. Khali had influence but there was only so much a lone Platinum could do against the ship overseers and Resource Board. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said. 

“I know.” 

“What happens now?” _What happens to me?_

“Ari, I have your contract, not the ship or estate. They can’t make you go back in the ship by leveraging the estate. We’re fighting the tech debt. If we can get it redistributed across all parties, with Jacor’s eyrie and Eyrie West for letting a pilot come in without landing confirmation, I may be able to pay it off and keep you here.” 

Ari’s breath caught and she buried her face in her hands, thinking of what that would cost Khali. Buy off her tech debt? Even a portion of it, one-third the vase and flyer, might cost her the estate and all she’d built out here in the desert. And then they’d just be homeless together, at the mercy of the other estates and the ship overseers. 

Her chest hurt at the thought, like the breath had been kicked right out of her. She’d stick by Khali no matter what, contract or no contract, estate or no estate, but she couldn’t imagine Khali’s lush gardens and carved stone home falling into ruin under some other platinum’s less skillful tending. Khali had been building her home for twelve years, and she was risking it all to save one lead-class girl. It was too much for Ari. Too much to ask of anyone. 

But before she could protest, or lose control and start crying, Khali spoke again. “If there was no tech debt, if none of this had happened, what would you want to do?” 

Ari paused, then realized what Khali was asking. “Did Vixet air me fighting with Jacor?” she asked. 

“Yes.” A small thin smile played over Khali’s face. “She didn’t mean to; she forgot to tell the camera men to stop direct broadcast and the results may fall in our favor. Many of our viewers believe you were right to stand up to Jacor and refuse a debt that isn’t yours. Plenty of copper and steel citizens have faced the same treatment, not to mention every other lead-class in Redrock. Vixet won’t be able to quietly send you back to the deep ship. If she tries, I’ll make sure _that_ exchange is aired as well. Vixet isn’t the only one on this estate with a camera and relay.” 

Ari smiled despite herself. Khali’s words were dangerous—only silver-class citizens had permits to operate broadcast tech—but the tension in her chest unwound a bit on hearing them. Khali would fight for her and that meant a lot, however ineffective it might be against the Resource Board, however painful the thought of Khali losing her beloved gardens on her behalf. “When I was yelling at Jacor, I didn’t mean I didn’t want to be here.” She chewed on her lip, then stopped herself. “But if I can’t be here I want to fly. I’m not going back inside. I can’t.” She stopped herself from imagining the dark, close walls, the heavy scent of metal and plastic, a world without a sky. “I don’t know how to get from here to there, Khali. And you can’t sacrifice this for me,” she gestured to the gardens below. “I’m not worth it.” 

Khali gripped her shoulder hard and tilted her head to rest against Ari’s. “You’re worth so much more, Ari. So, so much more.” 

They sat in silence as the last of the suns’ glow faded and the stars went from the few brightest pinpricks to the full span of the night sky. Far off, wild creatures shrieked and called to one another. The bigger wildlife never came near the ship but at night their songs carried across the mesa. Griffins, the pilots called them, the creatures the flyers were patterned after. 

The flyers who ruled the sky she longed for. “If I can’t be here,” she said again, “I’ll fly.” 

A plan was forming, slow and cumbersome, in her head. She’d only have one chance. One very small, very slender thread of hope. A way out for both her and Khali. 

Broadcasts were worth a lot of money and Khali’s was one of the most widely viewed. In-ship, citizens paid a broadcast tax for every feed they had access to. Almost every penny of Khali’s revenue went back into the estate, as the water ration, tools, in-ship food and resources, labor hours for workers to harvest and prepare the produce. Platinum citizens tended towards opulence; Renchescia’s estate was legendary for its display of wealth, but also for its inability to thrive the way Khali’s did. In contrast, Khali made out-ship life look both appealing and accessible. 

What if they made eyrie life look that way too? “You said you had a way to broadcast?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. Never mind that Vixet was sound asleep and two levels of solid stone away, she still felt a sneaking suspicion there was somehow a camera on them. 

“I didn’t say, exactly, but. Well. Vixet’s steels aren’t the only people who know how to use a camera, and let’s just say the censors aren’t immune to really good zucchini.” 

What exactly _that_ meant Ari didn’t have time to guess. 

Ari worked her fingers into a knot over her shins, to keep from biting her lips. This was the hardest part to say out loud. “What if I ran away?” She took a breath and said in a rush “I’ll take your camera and set up a pirate broadcast, and make a show out of the eyrie. I’ll pretend to be a copper-class and—can I borrow my lux cash back? It all blew off. I can bribe the freight pilot from earlier today. His flyer can carry two. Bribe him and get to an eyrie, claim I’m a copper just come from an estate for testing. I can pass the aptitude. I _know_ I can. I’ll broadcast the whole thing. No one has a feed from an eyrie yet.” She knew because she’d looked for one every time she’d borrowed Khali’s tablet for the past four years. A citizen could view the hydroponics bay and literally watch grass grow, but they couldn’t see what happened in the eyries or a pilot flying free over the mesa. “I’ll broadcast it through your signal, as an accessory show.” Henria was building her own broadcast viewership as an accessory to Khali’s; anyone already paying for Khali’s feed could subscribe to it for a small additional fee. “I bet it’ll be a hit in-ship. No one’s ever done it before. The revenue will help with the tech debt and you can say you have no idea where I got the camera or how I escaped.” 

She wouldn’t go to the deep ship of she was caught, she’d go straight to Redrock’s prison, where criminals were kept for the crimes of stealing or injuring each other or shirking their duties, or impersonating a metal class that wasn’t their own. 

Or for making a lead-class, a lead- _born._

She banished the thought. 

Prison would be bearable, if she could take the memory of flying with her. “I can’t go down to the deep ship. I’d rather be in prison for the rest of my life than spend it all scrubbing pipes and wondering if I could pull this off.” 

Khali laughed. “Ari, don’t ever let anyone tell you what’s impossible. But you don’t need to quite run off in the night. Wait for me to finish with the Resource Board. If I can’t get the tech debt split or deferred or put back on Eyrie West where it belongs, we’ll smuggle you into an eyrie in Renchescia’s fruit crate and let the ship guess at how Ren’s involved.” 

“I’m being serious.” 

“So am I.” Khali suddenly turned, so they sat face to face, and put her hands on Ari’s shoulders. “Ari, if anyone could make this work it’d be you, but as you’ve described it, the ship security would just go arrest the one trainee pilot lugging around a camera. Promise me if we get that far, if all else seems lost, we go forward together and make this plan fool-proof. I can’t come with you into an eyrie but I’ll support you every step of the way. Can you trust me to do this with you? However I can?” 

Ari nodded. Her throat suddenly felt thick and sharp. Every time she cried she thought _this will be the last time I let myself be wet and snotty and undignified,_ but every time somehow it happened again. At least with Khali’s arms around her she could hide her face. 

Khali’s lovely shirt was going to be ruined, but Khali didn’t seem to care. 

  



End file.
